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 Cheesecat wrote:

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
I am Canadian.

Beat me to it lol.

Manitoban here. Confirming Canadians don't even bat an eye at snow.

Well except the islanders on the west coast.

As for my snow story...well I guess I drove between Moose Jaw and Portage (5 hours drive) on my summer tires after the first snowfall. Road wan't plowed and I passed cars on the snow covered left lane.

I shouldn't be alive.

Also, @Easysauce, I've never heard of this game. Might have to give it a whirl.

 easysauce wrote:
wow... I wish school got cancelled just for 4" of snow...

I have never, not even once, ever had a snow day...

I had one. Once. Except it was less "Snow" more "Power Outage". So I went home and kept a bunch of Tropical Parrots warm. Because my house is on the same part of the grid.

A few years back we got about 5 or 6 inches of snow and schools were closed for a week. Apparently the weather gods didn't get the memo that snow is supposed to melt either the same day or the day after it falls.

When I lived in Kentucky if you saw two snowflakes at the same time the school was canceled in the surrounding 5 counties and people would immediately spin out and end up in a ditch. OK, that might be a slight exaggeration, but not by a whole lot. As my family had moved to KY from new england, my folks knew how to drive in snow, and taught my brother and I. The most dangerous part of winter driving was not the road conditions, but the other drivers.

I remember one big storm in the mid 90s where they shut the whole state down for a week. I remember watching the weatherman (or it might have been the traffic reporter) making snow angels on the interstate. The mayor promised to have a big truck drive down all the roads by the end of the week, so there would at least be ruts to follow. Ended up spending longer at home then I'd like.

I live in Minnesota. I have already driven to work through three winter weather events this year.

My first deployment as a machine gunner was to Afghanistan in 2003, where I had my first experience with strange "frozen water". I'm from Florida, and was obviously incapable of spelling the word "snow" at the time.

New people in that platoon are usually drivers. So, after almost taking the hummer through a snow drift and down a mountain side where the village looked like tiny specks and dots down below thanks to us being so high up, Corporal Delo "fixed" me and put me in the turret. After that wonderful session of necessary prescribed pain at the hands of my senior fellow infantrymen, I avoided driving in the snow anymore and began my long career as a turret gunner.

Screw snow.

About to go on my honeymoon this coming weekend to TN, and I hope the ice isnt too crazy.

Tell me everything will be okay.

Seriously. Please tell me.

HELP.

Dude its Tennessee. When I lived there we got about four inches of snow a year.

"Much too much." - Ace Ventura

 Blacksails wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
I am Canadian.

Beat me to it lol.

Manitoban here. Confirming Canadians don't even bat an eye at snow.

Well except the islanders on the west coast.

As for my snow story...well I guess I drove between Moose Jaw and Portage (5 hours drive) on my summer tires after the first snowfall. Road wan't plowed and I passed cars on the snow covered left lane.

I shouldn't be alive.

Hey now, let's not forgive Toronto just yet for that farce in January '99, when they deployed the army reserves to shovel their city because they were too lazy to just dump the snow in the lake themselves!

I mean, we here in Burlington, (about 30-40min drive west of The Big Smoke), weren't complaining that we had snow banks at least 6-8' high at the end of every driveway, and the windchill sitting things at a somewhat chilly -43.
And guess what, WE KEPT OUR SCHOOLS OPEN TOO!!! (I was smart, and didn't go that day, because it was still snowing about 5-10cm/hour and the snow bank on my corner had successfully 100% buried the stop signs as they were approaching 13' high at that point)
Overall Burlington is a crappy place to get caught in a decent snowstorm... The attitudes of our city work crews seem to be 'it will melt come April!' and so they take fething forever just to plow the main arteries. I live on a main school busing route to 2 schools, and we consider ourselves lucky to see a plow within 48 hours of a storm's end. Usually it's more like 72 hours before we get a plow... or if we're lucky a school bus full of kids nearly skids out/tips and we get special treatment and get a plow right away!

The other really fun storm we had in recent years was the Feb13-14th '07 storm where we smashed the city's record for most snow accumulation within 24 hours; 43cm fell over parts of those two days.



The only time you can ever call a snowstorm 'bad' if you're Canadian is when your city is forced to close all the ice rinks...

It's only apocalyptic if all the Tim Horten's locations are forced to close.

I'd heard of thunder snow in New England but always thought it was an old wive's tale.
Last year's blizzard in February, wind howling, 4 feet of snow still falling, me struggling to get the car dug out, all of a sudden it starts thundering and lightning.

Was in the field at Knox on old M60A3s. My track was missing the belly hatch in the driver's compartment. Big storm hit, dropped it down to -27 with wind chill. If you didn't crank the tracks hourly you risked the fuel gelling, which is a bad thing.

Anyway, it was my turn to drive and our route took us through what had once been a 2 foot deep creek. The 6 inches of ice was not near enough to hold up the tank and as we smashed through it I was showered in big chunks of ice and the freezing water and mud from under the ice which came up through the hole where our hatch should have been. I was not happy.

Another time while a recon platoon leader at Hood I had my guys out in the field for dismounted patrolling training when an ice storm hit the post. We had almost no cold weather gear and no sleeping bags. I tried to get some shut eye for a couple of hours cuddled up for warmth with my RTO under my poncho. Had to chip two inches of ice off that bitch to sit up a couple of hours later. I was not happy.

I don't really like the cold and snow.

After moving from Ireland to the Mid West I seen more snow last winter than I had the rest of my life

Semper effing Fi, Jake. Nothing quite like spooning to stay warm eh

 Brometheus wrote:
Semper effing Fi, Jake. Nothing quite like spooning to stay warm eh

Amen Brother.

I've had two deployments to Kyrgyzstan, both in the wintertime. Average temp there (before windchill) ranges from -10 to -30. First time I was there we were still living in tents. We had the 200m trek to the latrines. Quarter mile to the chow hall. etc... it was miserable.

Second time I was there, they had built dorms. Aluminum walled structures with no insulation. It was still an improvement though because our latrines were located in the same building, and the heaters were pretty solid. They were heater/ac units mounted in wall, like window units. After a particularly bad storm, the building heated up, and a lot of the snow melted and fell onto the heater. It then cooled at night, causing the heater to freeze. I spent several nights sleeping in -30 degree temps, within an aluminum box. Few nights have been has horrible as that.

 djones520 wrote:
I've had two deployments to Kyrgyzstan, both in the wintertime. Average temp there (before windchill) ranges from -10 to -30. First time I was there we were still living in tents. We had the 200m trek to the latrines. Quarter mile to the chow hall. etc... it was miserable.

Second time I was there, they had built dorms. Aluminum walled structures with no insulation. It was still an improvement though because our latrines were located in the same building, and the heaters were pretty solid. They were heater/ac units mounted in wall, like window units. After a particularly bad storm, the building heated up, and a lot of the snow melted and fell onto the heater. It then cooled at night, causing the heater to freeze. I spent several nights sleeping in -30 degree temps, within an aluminum box. Few nights have been has horrible as that.

Just kidding, spent some time inside a giant steel box with no heater. Not when it was as cold as what you endured, but enough below freezing that life was not good.

It snowed for the first time in 2 years. I kissed the snow and said ''Thank you Mother Nature''.

Canuck by birth. I've seen snow fall in every month. I've experienced -56C (-72C with windchill) winters, seen a flowing river freeze solid in under 2 hours, have had icy eyebrows/eylashes/facial hair more times then I can count. A couple inches of snow is known as Easter where I'm from. Now, on the other hand, we might get snow 2 or 3 times a year, and even then it's a dusting, like a late May fall. However, on the Sea of Japan side, look out! They get some crazy snow.

I have driven in Ice Fog, full blown blizzards, and ice storms.
Had state troopers following me during one storm, they were just driving in my tracks, looking for a lost plow.
Also seen snow in San Diego, a dusting, that sent half the state into a panic.
In North Carolina, my boss asked me to give a short talk on driving in snow to my co-workers, 'Keep it SLOW.... if you break 25 mph you are going too fast'.....

Kentucky doesn't get snow storms. We get "Ice Storms". Basically we get a ton of freezing rain, which destroys powerlines, turns roads into ice skating rinks, and makes every tree in the area a widowmaker for the next 3 months.

We had one a couple of years ago that put the Western half of the state in a State of Emergency if I remember correctly, and there was one back when I was in elementary school that knocked out most of the power in Lexington for over a week.

What's weirdest of all is there's almost no snow when these things hit. It's just pure ice. You walk out into the yard and the entire ground is just covered in a 1/4 inch of ice. We're probably due for another bad one this winter with the way the weather's been. They tend to hit every few years.

Hey Toronto, it's still snowing... why haven't you guys called in the army yet?!



The lake effect machine is still going here in Burlington, we might have 25cm by later tonight. Snowplows however seem to be missing in action as every single main street is still snow covered.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Hey Toronto, it's still snowing... why haven't you guys called in the army yet?!



The lake effect machine is still going here in Burlington, we might have 25cm by later tonight. Snowplows however seem to be missing in action as every single main street is still snow covered.

The mayor is trying to work out the street value first....

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
I am Canadian.

I chuckled at this. I'm from Michigan so our winters are pretty similar.


I remember once I woke up to start my car for work, opened the door, saw that it snowed so Hard that not only was my car buried, but the snow was level with my car. It took me 2 days to dig over to it and dig it out.


Obviously I called in

Just a quick bit of snow-related advice: If you are buying a snow blower, don't cheep out and get a little one. You want a giant two-stage monster where the warning labels show the whole hand getting lopped off.

We got around 8" this weekend, and the little POS I picked up years ago one again struggled to do the job. Can't toss the snow all the way to the side of the driveway, has to bludgeon it's way through the plug at the bottom, and clogs all the time.

I'm from north eastern Ohio, right on the lake. So much like Toronto, we get that lake effect gak all the time. My most recent snow story was last Wednesday. I was stuck in traffic an hour south of Cleveland on my way home from work. 40 minutes to go 10 miles (which admittedly wasn't as bad as the Wednesday prior where it took me 40 minutes to go 5 miles). There was a light dusting, i.e. it wasn't sticking and you couldn't tell it was snowing. But some idiot managed to forget how to drive in this stuff, and careened himself off the road.

So I got out of that gak situation, and hit Cuyahoga county (where Cleveland is), and it's just coming down. The roads are covered, the plows haven't been out yet, and there are no lane lines. So a 4 lane section of road becomes a "just don't hit anyone" number of lanes. At one point I counted 6 or 7 different lanes or cars. So I get onto that, and people are doing about 50mph in like 3 inches of unplowed snow.

Edit: I agree with Nevelon, the snow blower my dad bought 2 years ago is a piece of junk. It won't start in the cold (hurr when else would I use it?!), and it has trouble really getting down to the ground level. So I spent an hour and a half shoveling my driveway when the damned snow blower could have taken care of it in like 30 minutes...